


Accio Teeth

by aspeninthesunlight



Series: Side Stories for A Year Like None Other [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AYLNO Side Story, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23282536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspeninthesunlight/pseuds/aspeninthesunlight
Summary: This work, written by Kiki, is an alternate take on Chapter 91, "True Colors," of A Year Like None Other. That was the chapter where Lucius had taken Draco and Harry captive and dragged them to some property of his in France. Here we see a different way events  might have unfolded.
Series: Side Stories for A Year Like None Other [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672093
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	1. Mirror, Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Year Like None Other](https://archiveofourown.org/works/742072) by [aspeninthesunlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspeninthesunlight/pseuds/aspeninthesunlight). 



**  
_ACCIO TEETH_  
**

**_By Kiki_ **

Part I: Mirror, Mirror

It had all been a dastardly plot. And no, “dastardly” was not too strong an adjective. 

Draco pounded his fist on the dining room table, making the dishes jump. Harry looked up from his book in the sitting area of Snape’s quarters. The boys hadn’t left the rooms for two hours, not since they had been shepherded down here by Dumbledore and McGonagall and left alone. 

“For the millionth time, stop it,” Harry growled. “You’re making it worse.” 

“My bloody _father_ did this to us!” Draco snapped. “When I get my hands on him …”

Harry sighed. He closed his eyes in disgust, not with his brother, but with himself. Truly, this whole thing had been a disaster. Every action he and Draco had taken with Lucius Malfoy, from the moment Malfoy had cornered Draco in the Defense classroom, had been wrong. The result was a kidnapping. 

And the victim was still out there. 

Moments after Malfoy tossed Harry into the Floo, Harry fell out of the fire and onto the rug in the spacious, opulent living room of Malfoy Manor. He rolled like a log for a few seconds and came to rest by colliding with something. At first he thought it was the couch, but it turned out that the something was warm and human, limp and groaning.

“Harry? Is that you?” a familiar voice called out.

Lucius had lied – Draco had not been dragged off to the snake pit, but was merely decorating the floor next to Harry like some bad impression of a bear rug. He sounded dazed and slightly ill. Harry couldn’t answer his call, but fortunately he didn’t have to. Draco figured it out. 

“Harry, are you all right? He probably got you with the Petrificus or something, didn’t he? Oh God, I feel so sick,” he moaned. “Something in that damn Portkey.”

Harry hardly heard him. He had started gathering his energy for another escape attempt just as his brother mumbled, “Harry, I’m scared.”

_You’d be more scared than this if you had an inkling of what Lucius plans to do with you_ , Harry thought, and kept gathering energy. By some stroke of luck, he had rolled and stopped on his back, looking at the ceiling, covered in delicate, abstract serpent designs. If Harry had the ability to grin, he would have. He had strength … and will … and snakes … enough for this. 

Without Lucius Malfoy standing over him, he did a much better job than he had in the classroom. The power built, the thing inside him exploded again, and the spell lifted. He gasped for air, feeling parched and dizzy, but there was no time for wallowing. 

He crawled to his feet and got a good look at Draco, who was lying next to him on the Oriental rug, looking weak and green. Lucius probably attached a weakening hex to that Portkey or something. Putting his own dizziness aside, Harry helped Draco up. Draco turned greener at the motion. Seasickness Hex, then. 

“Come on, Draco, we have to get the hell out of here.”

Draco nodded carefully, as though trying not to be sick. Harry winced. “And as soon we get back, I’ll lift the hex on you. I don’t want to try any more magic here.” 

With Draco draped over one side of him like a cheap cloak, they stumbled together over to the fireplace. Harry grabbed for the pot of Floo powder and took out a handful. He threw it into the grate, shouted for Hogwarts, and they staggered into the flames. 

Professor McGonagall ran into the Great Hall just as they staggered out through the grate and Draco vomited all over the floor. Harry was close to joining him due to the dehydration, but managed to hold it in at the sight of his Transfiguration instructor. 

He wasn’t sure how long they’d been gone. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes, but the deputy headmistress looked like the walls were collapsing around her. Her hat and tartan sash were both askew, and she looked somehow panicked and relieved at the same time, which Harry didn’t quite understand. 

“Potter! Snape! Oh, thank heavens! We’ve been looking for you!”

“Professor, give us a second,” Harry said, holding her back. He waved his hand gently at Draco, took in the serpent design on his brother’s cloak and hissed, “ _No more bad stomach and wobbly legs_.” 

Draco recovered instantly. “Thanks,” he mumbled. And without preamble, he headed for the nearest table (Hufflepuff), grabbed a napkin, and wiped his mouth clean, rather than use his sleeve. Harry smiled faintly. 

Draco felt himself for his wand, cursed creatively when he realized his father had taken both of them, and turned to McGonagall. “Cast _Hydratus_ on Harry, would you, Professor?”

McGonagall, bewildered, followed the request and Harry immediately felt a bit better too, although not a hundred percent. 

“Thanks, Professor,” he said, and then launched into an explanation because it looked like she was about to start fretting or something. “Lucius Malfoy tried to kidnap us both, but we escaped. And Professor Aran was in on the whole thing!” After a moment’s recollection, Harry winced, realizing that Lucius had probably done away with Aran. He rallied quickly, though. “Where’s Severus? I tried to call for him, but he didn’t arrive in time. Bloody hell, he’s probably flipping out! Come on, Draco, let’s go find Dad.”

“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said finally, halting Harry with those two simple words. “Sit down. There, with Mr. Snape.” 

Draco, who was seated at the Hufflepuff table now, stared at her in confusion. Harry sat down next to his brother with a wary expression. And that was how they learned about the dastardly plot. 

“Aaron Aran is dead. And it seems that Lucius Malfoy was trying to kill three birds with one stone,” McGonagall said slowly, her jowls quivering slightly in a way that raised the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck. “I have no idea how you two escaped his clutches, although we’re all very relieved, but boys … Professor Snape is gone. We suspect foul play.” 

They’d been down here stewing ever since. Draco was too angry to talk with directly, so Harry had taken to talking to the walls, puzzling things out. 

“Obviously I was the ‘x’ factor, I wasn’t supposed to break the Petrificus and get us out of there,” Harry said, stirring his spoon around its nearly empty bowl. He had finished off most of his soup in an attempt to rebuild his strength after what had happened. “But that still doesn’t explain why … Severus is gone.”

He had quickly substituted the tamer phrase for “Lucius took Dad.” That string of words would have poisoned the air.

“He wanted all three of us for a different purpose,” Draco said across the table. “He wanted me because I’m his, I guess. He wants you because he wants to finish what he started on Samhain.” He shuddered. “And he wants to gets Severus because Severus took me from him.”

“He _adopted_ you,” Harry said. “It’s not like he clocked Lucius with a fireplace poker and dragged you from the house by your hair.” 

Draco snorted. “Look, don’t be offended, Harry, but the very rich think about stuff differently. It’s the principle of the thing. He feels I’ve been ‘stolen’ from him, and I doubt that I _mean_ anything to him, but the fact that someone had the gall to steal from him … I think you get the idea.”

“You’re not a jewelry box,” Harry remarked dryly. 

“Damn right,” said Draco. “I have legs. And if someone doesn’t arrive in twenty minutes, saying they found Severus wandering around a field somewhere looking for a potion ingredient, I will _use_ them.” 

Elsewhere and earlier, two wizards were locked in a battle of wills. One of them was at a distinct disadvantage, because his wand had been taken and he was chained to a wall. He was still trying to shake off the effects of the spell that had incapacitated him. It was disconcerting really, how little he remembered of his capture. All he knew for sure was that he had been too late to save the boys. Head bowed, he sadly wondered where they were. His opponent, standing a safe distance away, flipped his shimmering blond hair over one shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

“Come now, this is getting old,” he chided. “I have asked you once. I will only ask once more, and if you don’t comply, I’m afraid things will get rather sticky for you, rather quickly. Tell me what I want to know.”

“Ah, the classic Vague Threat,” the prisoner said. “Tell me. What happens if I comply?”

“If you do, and your information is good, then when I hand you to the Dark Lord perhaps I can convince him to be lenient,” the blond man replied through his teeth. 

The man chained to the wall looked up through a curtain of greasy black hair and stared. First of all, this was personal – _very_ personal. There would be no handing him to Voldemort. Secondly, he had never seen anyone remotely persuade Voldemort to do anything. Besides, he knew something about his captor’s cat-like interrogation techniques. The blond liked to play with his food, as it were. Whatever was going to happen between the two of them, it would not be quick. The man chained to the wall was very practical. He was willing to trade extra pain for extra time.

The man chose his words carefully and then said, as though they were discussing the matter over port and cake, “I’m rather curious, Lucius. What infuriates you more? Is it that Draco ran from you, or that he came to me?”

Lucius Malfoy’s face curled up in an ugly scowl, but before he could make a tart rejoinder his scowl turned into a grimace of pain and he clamped his left forearm, covering the burning mark. He noted briefly that his prisoner was not experiencing the same sensation. 

“You have until I return from the meeting to change your tune, Severus.”

He turned on his heel and Apparated away, leaving Severus Snape chained up and alone. 

Three days had passed with no word. Harry had worn a hole in the sitting area carpet with his pacing, Draco hadn’t done a lick of homework, and both boys were going stir-crazy. McGonagall and Dumbledore visited frequently, although she was picking up the slack of his position and he was splitting his time between the Headmaster’s office and Snape’s classroom, covering Potions. Defense had been cancelled in the wake of Aran’s death, and the situation surrounding it was causing rumors to fly thick and fast. But Harry and Draco hadn’t heard word one, since they were cooped up in Snape’s quarters for security, unable to attend classes or even have visitors aside from the Headmaster and Deputy Headmistress.

The latest news was not good. It had taken members of the Order a long time to fight through legal red tape to search the mansion at Wiltshire, and by the time they arrived the place was empty – no sign of either Lucius or Snape. Narcissa was in Switzerland. 

“We are checking the castle again, top to bottom,” Dumbledore said that afternoon through the fireplace. He sounded kindly and sad and extremely old. “Perhaps Argus will have more luck with those locked linen closets on the sixth floor. And Minerva and I will be out for the rest of the day, conducting more interviews in Wiltshire. We are trying to get a lead. In the meantime keep up with your studies, don’t leave the rooms, and do try to stay safe, boys.” 

Harry and Draco nodded, both feeling utterly miserable when the fire-call ended. It was two o’clock on the dot. Harry tested the condition of the wards, as he had been doing every waking hour on the hour since he and Draco had been down here. Both of them gasped at the sight.

Over the past few days, the wards had slowly been dimming in intensity, going from that bright, acid green to the dingy color of pine needles in weak light. They’d shared this with Dumbledore three days ago; he had merely looked upset and said they would keep looking. But now, seeing the webby mess in front of him, Harry had to tell himself to breathe and Draco was just staring in shock and dismay. 

The wards looked something like the beginnings of cotton candy, so delicate it was a wonder they were sticking to the ceiling at all. They were literally flickering, like a dying light bulb. 

Harry was suddenly catapulted back in time to that point when Snape had showed him the wards and cast _Tempus_.

“ _The wards have never wavered, Harry, because **I** have never wavered_.” 

Well they were wavering now, and Harry had a sick feeling in his stomach that it had nothing to do with Snape repudiating anyone. The man was physically deteriorating. It was the only explanation. A vision of Snape dying began to dance around anew in Harry’s mind. 

“Oh God,” he mumbled. “It’s just like the boggart. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh …”

WHAP. He looked up suddenly, his cheek stinging like hell. Meeting his brother’s angry gaze, he realized Draco had just smacked him across the face. 

“Ow!” he said rather belatedly. “What did you hit me for?”

“For being an idiot!” Draco scathed, but he sounded more frantic than angry. “Honestly, what the fuck is the matter with you? Severus has been captured, he’s plainly in serious trouble, and our brilliant faculty is fucking around checking _linen closets_! We have to find him! Now!”

“What the hell are you on about?” Harry countered, rubbing his face. “We can’t leave. They won’t let us, and we don’t know where he is.” 

Draco suddenly slapped his forehead, startling Harry slightly. “We _could_ know, though. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier. What about the enchanted picture frame? You could just ask it to show you Severus.”

Harry snorted. “No, I can’t. I sort of broke it to watch your hearing…” He winced. This was still a slightly sore subject. “And Severus took away the mirror I used to get it started in the first place. He packed it away somewhere, he said.” Harry stood stock-still for a moment, blinked once, and came to a realization. “He probably warded it.” Another pause. “And his wards are failing. If that mirror is here, I bet I could get it with a bit of wanded magic!” he babbled, suddenly excited. 

He took out his wand, looked at Draco’s current shirt (decorated tastefully with a water snake) and hissed, “ _Bring me my dog-man’s mirror_!”

There was a massive rumbling, a clatter, and a mirror came shooting out of Snape’s bedroom. It zoomed over the kitchen table and slapped into Harry’s hand. 

“Merlin’s balls,” said Draco. “You did it.” 

Harry noticed that the mirror had been repaired, except for a chunk that was missing from his last attempt with the picture frame. He sighed, laid his wand on the table, and hefted the looking glass above the stone floor. 

“Move back.”

Draco obeyed. Harry, looking as though he did this every day, dropped it on the stone. It smashed to bits. 

“Aaaugh! What did you do that for?” Draco screeched. 

“Shut up,” Harry commanded, and grabbed a big shard of the mirror. “This is how it worked the last time.” 

He grabbed his wand and ran off towards their bedroom, Draco trailing behind him with his mouth hanging open, and pressed the shard into the picture of the Whomping Willow. 

“Draco, get over here, I need your shirt.” 

Still rather stunned, Draco stepped over to where Harry could see the snake on his shirt. Harry bowed his head slightly, and stared with unfocused eyes at the design on his brother’s lapel. Pouring all his love and terror into the incantation, he hissed, “ _Show me my egg-watcher!_ ”

Snakes did have a curious way of referring to their parents, Harry realized, just as Draco gasped and stepped back. So did Harry. 

The picture frame had expanded to take up the entire wall, and both boys were looking at an unfamiliar field. There was nothing in the field save grass and some daisies to their left. It looked peaceful, almost like a churchyard. There was no sound coming through. Not even the wind, which was rustling through some of the grass, could be heard. 

“Oh, don’t tell me he’s dead and buried,” Harry whispered. 

“That’s impossible,” Draco countered. “If he was, the wards would be completely gone.” 

He scratched his head and looked closely at the field, and so did Harry, but while Harry’s expression was bleak, Draco’s was calculating. For a long time, he regarded the near left corner of the picture, and then he swore quietly. 

“That’s a disillusionment charm,” he said finally. “A really powerful one, if _we_ can’t see anything. There’s some kind of structure under there. But whoever put this up was in a hurry; if he’d done it completely, I wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Harry, look at what the wind’s doing!”

The grass was being buffeted about by the breeze, but it was flattening itself oddly, in a perfect corner. With his attention pulled to it properly, Harry observed the same. The wind was obviously blowing against the corner of some invisible building. He scratched his head, having moved from sheer panic to constructing a plan. 

“Do you recognize this place at all?”

“No.”

“But you can memorize what it looks like, right?”

“Yeeeess,” said Draco, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”

“If we can get out beyond the Apparition boundary, could you Apparate us there?”

Draco stared at him through horrified grey eyes. Harry was looking grim and determined, not a good look on the person who had just recently put himself in extreme danger for Draco’s sake. 

“Side-along you to a place I’ve never been? Are you insane? We could splinch ourselves! I can’t believe _I’m_ the one saying this. We need to get Dumbledore.”

“He’s not _here_ ,” Harry spat. “He’s conducting interviews with McGonagall. We know where Severus is, and the wards are getting dangerously weak anyway. We can’t stay here, Draco. There’s no protection. We might as well go!”

Draco sighed. “And what are we going to do when we get there, Harry, hmm? We have to assume that Severus is defenseless, and Lucius has back-up. We need some kind of plan. We don’t even know what this place looks like, how big it is, where Severus is inside it… We need time to sneak around.”

Harry furrowed his brow. “How? There’s probably some kind of magical alarm around the place.”

Draco snorted. “Judging from the skill at the disillusionment charm, I’d say there’s more than one.” He bit his lip and thought. “If only there was some way to get into the area without triggering it.” He snorted again. “Our magical signatures would give us away immediately, though. If we were Muggles we could walk right through those defenses, unless there was a Muggle-repelling charm or something.” 

There was a grim pause, until Harry straightened up. “Wait a second. I have an idea. What if … okay. I don’t know how to say it in Latin, or even if such a thing exists, but what if there was a way to conceal our magical signatures without doing anything to our magic? It would let us slip by the defenses; we could get Severus and be out of there before anyone even knew.”

Draco stared. “Are you telling me that you want to just invent a spell and see if it works?”

“I’ll test it on myself Draco, don’t worry,” Harry said easily.

“You will _not_!” Draco sputtered. “You can’t just make something up and point your wand at yourself, Harry, that’s suicide!”

“Draco,” Harry began dryly, “I’ve had to reinvent my entire spell lexicon in a different language. I have an effing _doctorate_ in ‘pointing my wand and making stuff up.’ And Severus is running out of time, so unless you have a better idea, I’m going with this.”

“But …”

“Here,” Harry interrupted, handing Draco his wand. “Make up as strong a ward as you know around some area of the sitting room. If I cast this thing correctly, I should be able to walk out of the bedroom and right through the ward without setting it off. Go!”

“You’re insane,” said Draco, but he went.

Harry felt something slithering up his leg just as Draco left, and was most pleased to see Sals. 

“ _Hello there_ ,” he hissed gently. “ _Care to help me out with this_?”

Draco was pacing back and forth in front of the couch when Harry came walking out of the bedroom. With some trepidation, he wandered over to the couch and sat down. Draco’s mouth fell open. 

“I … I cast an enormous ward around the couch with a Boiling Hex attached. You should be writhing in pain and red as a lobster. Harry, what did you do?”

“It took a couple of tries,” Harry said, and stood as Draco cancelled the ward and handed Harry his wand back. “But I got it. Sals helped.” He plucked her out of his shirt, settled her on his shoulder, and ignored the backward step Draco took. “Are you ready? I’m going to cast it wanded, so it won’t go anywhere. Hold still.”

Draco stood stock-still, closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and let out a little whimper.

“Calm down, will you?” Harry said. Then he hissed, “ _Make my nest-mate’s magic invisible._ ” 

“T-T-Test it,” Draco said, who looked like he really didn’t enjoy having Harry cast a Parseltongue spell on him. 

“Fine, I’ll set up a ward.” Harry constructed a good one, wanded, and invited Draco to step forward. 

Draco, having no idea what Harry had put up, moved through the barrier slowly and tensely, but nothing happened. Very surprised at this, he turned and went back out the other way. Still nothing. He crossed back over. No reaction.

He stared at Harry. “That was brilliant. What kind of horror did I just escape?”

“Boils, same as me,” Harry said calmly. 

Draco made a sniffy noise. “How original. Well, all right, let’s go. I have the place memorized, and you’ve covered your end … admirably.” 

Harry nodded, recognizing his brother’s bravado for what it was, and they made for the door of Severus’s chambers. Hoping against hope they wouldn’t set off any alarms, they took off at a run for the Entrance Hall. It was nearly 3 o’clock. Phase one of this plan depended on getting out of the castle before classes ended and someone saw them; they both ran flat-out across the marble floor. 

As Harry and Draco hurtled out through the oaken doors into the sunlight and sprinted for the Apparition boundary, Harry considered that after that demonstration, Draco really had nothing to worry about. His brother hadn’t escaped boils, like Harry had said. Draco had actually escaped something much worse. 

_How_ much worse was a secret Harry planned to take to his grave. 

As they crossed the boundary, Draco grabbed Harry’s hand. “Keep running!” he ordered. “It helps with the noise!”

Harry did as he was told. They raced along for about six more yards, their student robes flapping madly in the breeze, and both of them disappeared with a tiny _crack_. 


	2. Bastards

Part II: Bastards

“How long have you been away?” Snape mumbled his question through chapped, dry lips. It felt like Lucius had been gone for ages.

“A while,” Lucius said carelessly. 

“And why, pray tell, have I not been presented to the Dark Lord?” Snape asked.

It was a rhetorical question, asked only for the sake of potentially gaining information. Snape was positive that Lucius had not told Voldemort who he had chained up in what was presumably his dungeon. The man wanted this kill all to himself. The Potions master wondered vaguely if anyone was looking for him. 

Lucius looked sour. “Because I will not present you to be killed until I know how to deal with that brat you adopted.” 

Snape’s heart sped up – Lucius had unwittingly given something away. If he didn’t know how to “deal with” one of the boys, then that meant that one (or both) had somehow escaped the trap. Snape didn’t let his grim expression slip for a microsecond, though. He gave Lucius the hardest look he could manage. 

“To which of my sons do you refer?”

Lucius’s face contorted into an ugly sneer. “Potter,” he hissed. “The one the Dark Lord will murder as soon as he’s murdered you.” 

“That’s very convenient,” Snape snarled back, “Considering the only way anyone will get to either of those boys is over my cold, dead body.” 

Perhaps that wasn’t the best choice of words. Lucius lost his last shred of patience; he wound up and backhanded Snape, letting his ring slice into the man’s cheek. Snape’s head snapped to the side and blood flew.

“I tire of this,” Lucius announced. “I will be back momentarily and we will begin the interrogation. If I learn something useful before you die, then perhaps your entire existence might not have been a waste.”

Snape was silent. But as soon as Lucius was gone, he allowed himself a gulp. 

Harry and Draco appeared with a faint _pop_ and hit the ground running. They promptly tripped and landed in a pile on the grass. It took them a few seconds to pick themselves up and dash behind the nearest tree. Draco flicked some grass off his jacket. Harry spat out a daisy.

“Well, we’re here,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, we are.” Draco was breathing hard. “What now?”

“I’ll remove the disillusionment charm,” Harry said. He took out his wand and automatically held it the wrong way. No sense in trying this wanded unless he had to. “Draco, shirt.” 

“Huh? Oh.” 

Harry kept an eye on Draco’s lapel and hissed an incantation … and a charming cottage fluttered into view. It looked rather disturbingly like the one Severus maintained in Devon, except smaller. Whitewashed and cheery, with a thatched roof and plenty of flowers growing in front, it was warm and inviting, down to the hand-made pine door and delicate glass windows. Considering the evil that was probably going on inside, it was the last thing the boys expected to see.

So Harry and Draco shared a “What the hell?” look, only to jump back behind the tree as the front door swung open and a Deatheater, fully robed and masked, stomped out and started looking around. Harry tightened his grip on his wand.

“Damn it!” the underling yelled in an unfamiliar voice. “What’s mucking about with my charm?” 

In near silence, Harry cancelled his spell and the house disappeared. The Deatheater scratched his head at this, looked around again in suspicion, and wandered back inside. Draco fought down a nervous laugh as the door closed.

They both turned and sat down in the dirt at the foot of the tree.

“Well, what d’you reckon?” Harry whispered. “They don’t know we’re here, so that’s good, but what I can’t figure out is where Severus might be. I mean, this place just isn’t that big, and I didn’t hear _anything_ in the house when he opened the door. You don’t think it’s spelled with Wizardspace, do you?”

“No, stuff like that gives off serious vibes,” Draco whispered back. “I think that cottage is just the actual size. Although…” He gingerly patted the ground he was sitting on, and looked down in thought. “Harry, do me a favor. Give me your wand again.”

Harry handed it over. 

“ _Subterra_ ,” Draco murmured, and before their eyes appeared a small, glowing cube. “Bastard. He’s underneath the house. There’s a room down there. No doubt that’s where he’s got Severus.” He waved the spell away and handed Harry’s wand back to him. 

“All right,” Harry said after a minute. “Here’s the plan. This looks like a small operation – just Lucius and this idiot. One of us needs to lure and incapacitate. Then the other can duck in, grab Severus, and Apparate away.”

“Fine,” Draco said, not really paying attention. Harry could tell he was very nervous. “But first things first: take off your shirt.” 

“What?”

“You need a snake, you idiot, and Lucius smashed your glasses! Let’s switch clothes.” 

As Draco was shrugging off his jacket and Harry was pulling his jumper over his head Draco asked, “Who’s providing the diversion?”

“Me, I guess,” Harry replied, starting on his shirt buttons. “You’re the only one of us who can Apparate. You have to go in and get Severus.” 

Draco stared at Harry for a long moment as they swapped shirts. This whole plan was totally insane. Whoever provided the diversion on the lawn stood an excellent chance of receiving an _Avada Kedavra_ for his trouble … and then it dawned on him what Harry was suggesting.

“Absolutely fucking not,” he growled. “No. _I’ll_ do something stupid out front, _you_ take them out, and then we’ll _both_ get Severus.”

Harry glared at him. “Draco, he’s getting weaker with every minute. We have to be fast.” 

Draco glared back. “That cottage could be packed with Deatheaters. We have to be thorough.” 

They looked at each other hard for a second, neither budging an inch. 

“All right, all right,” Harry finally said. “You win. We’ll do it together.” There just wasn’t time to argue about tactics right now. He stood and knotted his jumper around his waist.

“Excellent, I’ll start,” said Draco, and he got up too, tugging his jacket down over Harry’s shirt.

“Wait, hold up. What’s your plan?”

“I’ll ring the bell and run away, Potter,” Draco sneered. He grabbed several choice pebbles from the ground and shot an irritated glance at Harry. “Will you calm down? A few rocks against on the door should grab their attention.”

Well that idea didn’t sound _too_ stupid. Harry nodded. 

“All right,” Draco said, “Get ready. And go full power – I don’t want this bastard getting up.”

Harry stood his ground just next to the tree, worked the toes of his trainers into the dirt, and held his wand steady, ready to fight. 

“Toss,” he said tightly. 

Draco heaved a pebble. Unfortunately, because the cabin was invisible again, his aim was off. Both boys winced at the sound of breaking glass – Draco had put the rock right through the left window. It must have struck something inside too, because the same underling yelled, “Ow!”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Nice.”

The front door burst open. 

“Shut up, Harry,” Draco hissed. “Here he comes!”

Snape was dizzy, faint, parched, and starving. Lucius hadn’t been doing him any favors with his interrogation techniques and infrequent meals. There was no bathroom he could use, save the area under him, so in the end he’d just let things take their course. For some reason Lucius hadn’t said anything about it; he had Vanished the mess away several times now.

It was a very small consolation. Snape’s wrists were a mess from the manacles. His legs were cramped and bleeding and not holding him steady anymore, thus the messy wrists. He could only see out of one eye; the other was swollen shut. Three ribs had taken the brunt of his captor’s wrath at some point and now breathing involved a lot of pain and spit. The remaining rational bit of his brain told him he’d only been here for three days, that this was the morning of day four (he’d been telling time by Lucius’s outfits), but his overwhelming sense was that he’d spent the last three weeks in a torture chamber.

“Will you tell me, Severus?” Malfoy practically crooned the question. “Will you tell me what Harry’s secret is? The boy almost melted me when I caught him. Fortunately Professor Aran helped me out by locking him in a Petrificus. Rather a pity I had to kill Aran, but his usefulness had ended.”

The one tiny corner of Snape’s mind that was not in distress had just become very angry. So that damn Defense professor had been in on this? It was a good thing the man was dead already. It saved Snape from temptation. Still, he took comfort in the fact that Lucius hadn’t captured the boys. If he had, he would have simply handed Harry to Voldemort, and they wouldn’t be having this discussion. 

So with any luck, the boys were safe and someone was looking for him. And if he died protecting his sons, then Lucius was partially right … his existence would not have been a waste.

“But enough about Aran. Come, Severus. Tell me what I want to know. What have you taught young master Potter? What Dark Magic have you given him, and how does he unleash it?”

Ironically enough, the answer to these questions were, “Nothing, none, and I don’t know,” the three responses most likely to get him killed anyway. Lucius leaned in close, grabbed Snape by his dirty, blood-stained collar, and snapped his prisoner’s face up. 

“Hmm?” Lucius prompted. 

Snape said nothing.

“Severus, you’re going to die anyway.” Lucius pointed this out as though making the observation about an axe-bound hog. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll make it quick.”

Snape looked into his tormentor’s flashing blue eyes and smirked grimly as pain pumped through him. He had to say something, he knew. Conversations, after all, required two people. And in a moment of near enlightenment, he realized that whatever he was about to say would possibly be his final words to Lucius Malfoy. He licked his dry lips and made it count.

“I am not afraid,” he whispered, “of death, or Voldemort, or you.”

Then he spat blood in Lucius’s face.

Lucius stood back, disgusted, and wiped himself off with a monogrammed kerchief. Gone was the polished aristocrat – he looked positively feral. Snape watched almost without interest as Lucius tapped the top of his walking stick, charming the silver snake head so it writhed and hissed. 

“My, my, what a martyr you are,” he snarled. “Well, I suppose I should slow your experience to a reasonable rate. One to one.” He muttered an incantation and pointed at Snape with his cane. It had no obvious effect, but Lucius was satisfied. 

“Excellent. Now you’ll experience time as it really is. I don’t want you succumbing too fast, you understand,” he finished, gritting his teeth and bringing the cane up like a Beater’s bat. “Makes it more interesting for _me_.”

The first swipe of the cane broke another rib. 

The second swipe broke his collarbone.

The third slammed against his mouth with a sickening crack. 

Already buffeted in a windstorm of pain, Snape felt his mouth fill with blood. His jaw seemed to be hanging wrong. A river of red dribbled over his lips and down his chin. But Lucius wasn’t finished. He pressed the tip of the cane to Snape’s chest, and the snake on top of the walking stick sank its jaws through his shirt and into the flesh there. Snape screamed once through his broken jaw, a dry, breathy sound that hardly carried, and went dead limp in the chains. Lucius, perhaps in a moment of pity, waved his wand at the manacles, and Snape crumpled to the floor in a filthy, bloody heap.

“If the blood loss doesn’t get you, the infection will,” Lucius said to the still form. “Goodbye, Severus. And don’t worry about funeral expenses. I’ll send your traitorous carcass straight to the Dark Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you in death, honor you even … and make you an Inferius.”

Lucius calmly trotted up the earthen steps to the cottage above, slowly cleaning his cane, and wondered idly what his assistant would be fixing for lunch.

It was absurd, Harry thought. Here he was with his brother, in a beautiful meadow full of trees and flowers, on a lovely afternoon in May, fighting for their lives. Harry had thrown several nasty curses at the underling they’d managed to lure out of the cottage (and he’d fired back – there were scorch marks on their tree), but it was Harry’s stunner that finally brought the minion down. He was lying on the grass, unconscious and unmoving. Harry and Draco ducked behind the tree just as the door opened again.

Everything should have been fine. 

But there was a nasty pause, and then Lucius Malfoy (there was no mistaking that voice) cursed very creatively and fired a hex into the sky, calling for reinforcements. Four white-masked, black-robed wizards appeared on the lawn and bowed to him. 

“Fan out,” he said. “Someone’s here.” 

“Shite,” Harry hissed. “There’s four of them.” 

“Four of what?” Draco whispered. He couldn’t see around the tree.

“Deatheaters,” Harry whispered back grimly. 

Draco went a bit white in the cheeks. He looked terribly vulnerable without a wand, and Harry had a fleeting moment of desperation when he realized he couldn’t just loan Draco his own. He had hang on to it. They had secrets to protect, after all. 

“We should slip around,” Draco said.

“We should hit them head on,” Harry countered. And he bolted. 

Fingers scrabbled desperately at his borrowed shirt, but he slipped away from the tree and tiptoed towards the four figures. They didn’t notice him until it was way too late. 

“ _You will give me your sticks right now_ ,” he hissed, holding his wand at its usual ineffective angle. 

The Deatheaters, not knowing what Harry was saying, weren’t able to put up any defenses fast enough and all four of their wands slapped into his left palm. They were standing still now, not looking so enthusiastic after hearing the Parseltongue. Draco ran to Harry’s side and picked out one of the wands. 

“Oooh, birch,” he said, feigning that bravado that Harry had heard too much of lately. “This will do nicely.” 

“Good.” Harry said, and then hissed, “ _Burn!_ ” at the other wands. They went up in flames and turned to ashes in his hand. 

Now the Deatheaters were backing away quickly. One of them was starting to gibber. Harry ignored all this. As two of them turned to run, he fired a Sleeping Curse at the whole group, putting just enough energy through his wand to get the job done properly. They all collapsed in the grass. 

Draco was nodding at this, satisfied, when the door to the cottage burst open and Lucius strode out into the sunshine. He had heard one of the Deatheaters crying out, and had hurried to see what the matter was. He looked utterly shocked to see the boys. The boys, who were not nearly so shocked to see _him_ , fired hexes immediately. 

“ _Expelliarmus!_ ” Draco hollered, just as Harry hissed, “ _Hoist the git up by his tail!_ ” 

He’d meant to say ankle, but snakes had no equivalent, and the effect was the same anyhow. He’d gotten the idea from seeing the Pensieve last year (as painful as it was to remember that) but he had to admit that the curse was pretty good. Lucius’s cane went flying into Draco’s empty hand, and Lucius himself was hanging upside-down in mid-air by his left ankle, flailing madly and yelling obscenities.

“I’ll cover him!” Draco announced boldly, keeping his borrowed birch wand trained on Lucius. “Go!”

Harry heeded the command and dashed through the open door, ignoring the gut-punch of the last time he and Draco had been separated dealing with this man. He was very grateful to find the interior visible and empty. He ran through a simple sitting area and past a small, well-stocked kitchen. Evidently, Lucius had intended to be here for a while with Snape. 

Harry forced down a wave of nausea at the idea and pelted down a hallway past a bedroom and a bathroom. He stopped at the end of the hall. Something had pulled him, powerfully, to this spot. He looked down at the wooden floor beneath his feet and realized he was standing on a trap door. 

He hopped off, scrabbled for the catch and yanked it open, revealing an earthen staircase leading down into a carved-earth cellar. One quick, fake _Lumos_ lit his way and he ran down the stairs two at a time into the near darkness of the space under the cabin. The place stank of rot and muddy earth and floating around in that soup was the unpleasant, sickly-sour scent of illness. A few lamps were burning dimly. There, in a corner, directly under a pair of limp manacles, was a pile of black rags. 

Harry gulped and ran over. He took in the sight around him, shining his wand this way and that at the pools of drying blood and the body in the middle, and again had to will himself not to be sick. 

Snape was a mess. What remained of his customary black teaching attire was shredded and torn. His shoes were gone. His greasy hair was matted and tangled. His face was a colorful canvas of blood and bruises and his jaw was obviously broken. Harry laid two shaking fingers on his father’s neck and felt for a pulse as he looked around. Amazingly enough, Snape was alive, although obviously in need of medical attention.

Harry stared around him at the cold pools of slop and blood. The one nearest his father was a rancid puddle of red and green and yellow, punctuated by several off-white spots. 

“You traitorous little brat!” Lucius Malfoy shouted as he twisted round madly in the air. He had been unable to cast anything useful at his son without his wand, so he had resorted to screaming at him. “I don’t know how you found this place, but you’re not leaving it alive!” 

“Oh stuff it, _Lucius_ ,” Draco replied, taking a bit of pleasure in this mode of address.

“Aaaargh! You wait until this hex wears off, you little ingrate! _I’ll rip your heart out_!” Lucius roared, still twisting like an ersatz ceiling fan. 

Draco glared at him, his face like a stone. Lucius had already ripped out his heart with mere words, and more than once. There was no reason to give him another opportunity. 

“ _Silencio_ ,” he drawled.

The yelling upstairs had distracted Harry for a second, but now he was all business. He needed to somehow stabilize his father, and his panicked mind presented a rather silly solution that actually proved, as the seconds ticked by, to be viable: transfiguration. If Barty Crouch Jr. had been able to transform his father into a bone, then Harry could certainly transform Snape into something small and inanimate, too. And if he did it well, he thought, it might even put his guardian in stasis and buy some precious time. So he shoved his wand in his back pocket and focused his hands on Snape. It was hard. Draco was out front, face to face with the man who wanted his whole family dead, and Snape was … Merlin, Snape was bleeding everywhere. 

Harry managed it, though. “ _Be not a man, but a small sunning place_ ,” he hissed, and with a loud _pop_ , Snape disappeared, only to be replaced by a small, shiny black rock. It looked like a chunk of obsidian. He gently put the pebble in his pocket, took out his wand, and was about to leave the dungeon when his wand light hit the nearby puddle again. He suddenly saw the puddle more clearly, and stopped dead. 

“Oh God,” he said, because it had just dawned on him what those odd white spots were the in puddle. He held out a quivering hand, swallowed the rising bile in his throat and softly commanded, “ _Accio_ teeth.”

Nothing happened. It took Harry a few seconds to realize that in his shock, he’d incanted in English. He shook it off and re-incanted in Parseltongue.

Three molars, two bicuspids and a canine, yellowed with age and use, launched themselves out of the muck and into his hand. Harry put the teeth in his other pocket and ran flat-out up the stairs. He only paused on his way out of the cottage. Three familiar wands lay on the kitchen table: Snape’s, Snape’s grandfather’s (currently Draco’s), and Draco’s old wand, the object that had gotten them all in this mess in the first place. Harry picked up the first two; he wouldn’t touch the last one.

He speedily shoved Snape’s wand and Draco’s current wand down his shirt for safe-keeping and burst out into the sunshine, his own wand at the ready. Lucius was still stuck upside-down. All the blood was rushing to his head, turning his face a ghastly purple color that clashed horribly with his blond hair. He was still cursing, but Harry wasn’t sure what he was saying, as Draco had obviously cast a silencing charm. It was like watching a cartoon on mute.

Draco looked at Harry for confirmation. Harry nodded, noting that Draco had a fistful of wands: the one he took from the Deatheater brigade, the wand belonging to the first Deatheater out of the house, and Lucius’s cane.

“Right then, we’re off,” Draco said amiably to his father. “Don’t try this again, Lucius, you’re clearly out of your depth. Come on, Harry, let’s go.”

Draco threw his left arm chummily over Harry’s shoulder. They walked forward three paces and disappeared with a loud cracking noise. 

Five minutes after they were gone, both spells on Lucius disintegrated and he landed in a heap on the grass, surrounded by unconscious Deatheaters. He groaned heavily and dizzily picked himself up. 

His first instinct was to check the cellar. He tripped in his haste on the stairs and soiled his pristine white outfit, cursed loudly when he realized the space was empty, and then tripped on the way back outside and banged his kneecap into the kitchen table. There was only Draco’s old wand there (now unusable since he had turned it into a Portkey), so he limped back out and checked his followers’ pockets. It took him a few moments to realize that Draco and that damn Potter boy had not only made off with Snape, but _also_ with all the working wands in the immediate area, including his own. 

“AAAAAARGH!!! YOU LITTLE BASTARDS!” he roared at the sky. “WAIT UNTIL I GET MY HANDS ON YOU!!!”

Perhaps it had been a mistake to leave Lucius Malfoy alive, perhaps not. The boys had no time to debate this. As soon as they appeared near their destination, Harry managed to shout to Draco, “I’ve got Snape in my pocket!” and they sprinted for Hogwarts, just in case Lucius was on their tail. If Draco found this unusual, he didn’t say anything. 

All talk was on hold anyway; neither of them had any breath to spare. They charged like lunatics through the Apparition boundary, under the winged boars at the open front gate, past worried friends on the lawn, through the huge front doors, past _more_ worried friends in the Entrance Hall, and shot down to Snape’s quarters. 

It was almost five o’clock. As soon as they closed the door, Harry quickly undid his invented camouflage spell on both of them (“ _Make our magic visible again!_ ”), and started dumping his haul of wands on the dining table, while Draco dropped his take on the couch and ran for the fireplace. He was just about to throw down some Floo powder and call the Headmaster when the door burst open. Dumbledore and McGonagall strode in, both ignoring the magic doorbell. 

Neither of them looked pleased.

“Mr. Potter, Mr. Snape, may I ask where the _hell_ you have been?” McGonagall snapped. “We were interviewing in Wiltshire when an alarm went off here!”

“Saving Severus,” Draco fired back, straightening up. “We found him. Well, Harry found him,” he amended. “And we brought him back.” 

“You _both_ left?” Dumbledore thundered. “What happened?”

“Long story,” Harry said gruffly, rolling up his jumper sleeves. He had no time for blustering right now, even if it was from the greatest wizard of the age. He took the wands Draco had left on the couch and added them to the pile on the table. 

Dumbledore was about to say something, but he stopped dead at the sight of Harry carrying Lucius Malfoy’s cane. 

“Good heavens. Where did you come by that?” he asked, and pointed to clarify. 

“Well, Lucius Malfoy kidnapped Dad,” Harry said. “We took his cane away from him. It was Draco that managed it, actually.”

McGonagall seemed incapable of speaking. She was just staring at the two boys and blinking as though she’d never seen them before. 

“Look, if you two would care to sit down, we’ll fill you in on what happened,” said Harry. “But right now Severus needs Madam Pomfrey. He’s hurt badly, and I don’t know how long my Transfiguration will hold.” To prove this, Harry took out his black pebble, which was starting to wriggle alarmingly.

Dumbledore waved his wand once and a little golden bird shot out of it. It fluttered directly up through the ceiling. He faced Harry seriously. 

“She will be here momentarily.”

Harry nodded, and kept gently palming the pebble. That seemed to squish it back into shape well enough. They all stood around and stared at each other in very uncomfortable silence for an eternal thirty seconds, until Madame Pomfrey burst in. 

Harry was petting the pebble by this point to keep it quiet. He went with her into Snape’s bedroom and watched as she laid out a canvas sheet over the duvet, charmed to be impenetrable, chattering on about diagnostic charms and other stuff that Harry couldn’t quite find the energy to pay attention to. He put the pebble on the bed, glanced at his borrowed shirt, and countered the spell. 

Snape appeared with a _pop_ , breathing shallowly, stinking like nothing Harry had ever smelled before, and bleeding all over the canvas. Harry was allowed just a moment to stare sadly at his father before Madam Pomfrey squeezed his shoulder. 

“I’ll take it from here, Mr. Potter. Go outside and wait.” 

Harry nodded dumbly and made for the door, only to crash right into Draco, who had wandered in. Seeing their collision, Pomfrey shouted dismissively, “And take Mr. Malfoy with you!” She shooed them both out and slammed the door behind them. 

Draco and Harry both stood blinking in the hallway. Harry had barely registered Madam Pomfrey’s comment. It had been a heat-of-the-moment statement, said without thinking and without malicious intent. It didn’t matter, though. Draco looked rather like he’d been hit in the stomach with a slug-belching curse. He hung his head. 

“Snape,” he mumbled, “Not Malfoy.”

And it suddenly hit Harry what Draco had probably been feeling for the past few days, suspecting the horrors that his biological father was inflicting on his real father, and now preparing to drown in the evidence. Harry moved to his brother’s side, determined to stop this before it got even worse. 

“Look, there’s nothing we can do for a while. Let’s just go to the liv – um, parlor, and explain everything to Dumbledore and McGonagall before they throw us out of school.”

Draco swallowed hard and didn’t move. “They’ll blame me. Hell, _I_ blame me.”

“You can’t possibly be serious,” Harry chided. “Come on, put those perfect manners on display. I’ll get tea.” 

He gave Draco a shove out into the sitting area, and cleared his throat. McGonagall and Dumbledore both looked up. 

“Would anyone like something to drink?” Harry asked.

Dumbledore asked for tea. Draco asked for water with lemon. McGongall kneaded her forehead and, to Harry’s surprise, asked for a shot of firewhiskey. 


	3. The Wrong Decision

Part III: The Wrong Decision

It was eight o’clock. Harry and Draco were slumped on the couch in the sitting area, staring at the floor and ceiling respectively. After they’d explained everything to Dumbledore, he pocketed all the extra wands, leaving only Snape’s and Draco’s, admonished them briefly, and left. McGonagall, upon seeing their dismay and the gray tinge to their faces, merely admonished them too. She took her leave without even giving them detention. 

The lack of punishment was hardly something to get excited about, given the way the week had gone so far. The only positive part had been when Dumbledore said that leaving Lucius Malfoy alive had been the correct thing to do, circumstances notwithstanding. 

“Door?” Harry grunted. 

Draco threw a lazy look over the back of the couch. “Still shut,” he said, and scrubbed at his eyes. “Merlin’s balls. She’s been in there forever! What the hell is taking so long?” 

“Dunno. The wards are getting a lot stronger, though,” Harry said. He checked the condition as the clock began to chime: the webbing was a brighter green, and no longer looked like a pathetic bid at cotton candy. “That’s a good sign.”

“True,” Draco admitted, his gaze far away. 

The magic doorbell chimed in their heads, and they both got up to answer. Draco groaned at the parchment and immediately turned away, but Harry walked over closer, read the names with a slight smile, and opened it. Hermione and Ron burst in. Hermione, on seeing Harry, shoved Ron aside and threw her arms around him. Harry nearly had to peel her off.

“Harry, thank heavens you’re all right. We just heard,” she explained. Ron elbowed her. “All right, _over_ heard. The rumors are flying. Nobody knows what really happened to Aran, or to you two, or _what_ happened to Snape, but ...” she trailed off expectantly.

“Aran’s dead, we’re … here, I suppose, and Severus is a mess,” Draco said. He sounded a bit lost. “Madam Pomfrey’s been in there with him since five o’clock.” 

Ron let out a low whistle. “That’s serious, that is. You two need some company?”

Harry nodded. Draco shrugged noncommittally. So they all sat down in the parlor and talked in between thimbles of Galliano, Harry filling them in on mostly everything, and Draco checking intermittently to see the state of Snape’s bedroom door. Even after all four of them had drunk two shots each, it was still firmly shut. 

It didn’t open until nine o’clock. Madam Pomfrey came out with her hair undone and her hat on crooked. Ron was napping on the couch. Hermione was curled up like a cat in an armchair. Draco and Harry were playing cards at the table, too wired to lie down even after the Galliano. They both looked her way. 

“Well, it’s good news,” she said. “He’ll be all right in due time. Erm, Harry, I have one last task to do before I go. I’d better do it while he’s still out. Did you happen to collect anything from where he was being held? Originals are always better than copies.”

And Harry realized what she meant. He stood up, still holding his hand of cards, took the teeth from his pocket and gave them to her. Draco watched the exchange in shock, but Pomfrey said nothing to either of them until she was at the bedroom door. “I’ll just reattach them and be on my way, then.” 

Harry nodded at her, ignoring the appalled, astonished look Draco was giving him. When he could no longer do this, he turned to him with a challenging stare. 

“What?”

“Nothing, I just… How many teeth did Lucius knock out of his head?”

“Six,” Harry spat. 

“Fuck,” Draco muttered. 

Harry nodded in agreement. He checked his cards with little interest, and then leaned over to see Draco’s hand. Draco was too tired to even protest at this blatant display of cheating.

“We tied for it,” Harry commented. “Pack it in.”

Harry threw his cards on the table and Draco slapped his down on top of them. He was putting them back into their case as Madam Pomfrey came back out. 

“All right, that’s that. Now,” she began bracingly, “Professor Snape isn’t well.”

Harry was not in the mood to be coddled, and the alcohol hadn’t helped his temper. “Yeah, we gathered that,” he snapped. “Details, if you would. Just tell us what to do, and we’ll take care of him. I know you have an infirmary to run.”

Madam Pomfrey blinked in astonishment at Harry, and Draco groaned. “For heaven’s sake, Harry, that’s what house-elves are for.”

“That’s what _sons_ are for, you idiot!” Harry fired at him. 

“Muggle-raised,” Draco said to Madam Pomfrey, as though apologizing for some gaffe on Harry’s part. Harry glared at Draco, and a muscle worked in his jaw. 

She crossed her arms at the pair of them. “Actually, most of it is already set up. And I give him about five days in recovery. I had to mend all sorts of broken bones, reattach teeth, stop internal bleeding, clean him up, get some nourishment in him… He’s not in his twenties anymore. He needs a little time. Once he wakes up, he needs complete bed rest for three days. My orders. And don’t worry about keeping him in bed … he’ll stay down on his own.” 

Draco looked mildly suspicious at this, but Harry just blinked at the torrent of information. 

“Um, okay,” he said finally. “Is he awake?”

The matron sighed. “No. I had to numb him up for most of the repairs, and a double dose of Blood Replenishing Potion is a bit tough on anybody. Those plus the stress of the whole thing should keep him out completely for at least a day. Anyway, as to his care: first of all, his wounds got infected – something fast-acting and unnatural. I drew out a huge percentage of the mess, but there’s traces remaining, so if he runs a low-grade fever for a bit, don’t panic. It means his body is finishing it off. Just keep him comfortable. Secondly, he hasn’t been properly fed. Malfoy did something to him that somehow magnified the effect of that – dreadful business – and you two must help him get back into it. He should have water first, then half a cup of something easy every three hours for the first day. You can progress depending on how he feels after that. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused. 

“Thank you,” Harry added, already feeling like a bit of a heel for snapping earlier. 

Madam Pomfrey smiled gently at him. “Go sit with your father.” Then she turned to Draco and said, “Both of you.” 

The boys didn’t need telling twice. They quickly went for the bedroom door. The last thing they heard before it closed was Pomfrey saying “Miss Granger? Miss Granger, get up dear, you really ought to leave. You too, Mr. Weasley.”

The next twenty-four hours were rather dull for Harry and Draco. They had elected to stay down in Snape’s quarters and not go to classes, so most of their time was spent doing their homework and checking with Hermione to make sure they were up-to-date (they were). They spent the rest of it eating, sleeping, and having pointless conversations, which they mostly did in Snape’s room in case he woke up early. 

Snape’s room was quiet. The matron really had arranged everything, from the nutritive potion to the automatic status update spells that floated in the air from time to time. She had set something else up to take care of other bodily functions, a spell or something on the blankets, but Harry never figured out what it was. So, for a while there was really nothing to do besides poke around in the cabinets next to the bed. Draco had done this out of sheer boredom, only to stop when a pair of tweezers jumped out of a drawer and pinched themselves around his nostrils – a painful punishment for nosing around. After Harry had helped Draco sort himself out and get rid of the tweezers, he divided his gaze between his brother and the bed’s occupant, who was not doing anything exciting. 

The bed itself seemed to be bigger than Harry remembered. Snape was in the middle under the midnight blue comforter, with a wide sweep to either side of him. Under this, Madam Pomfrey had wrapped him very snugly in a single blanket, charmed to monitor his condition until he woke up. He did look a lot better than yesterday, Harry had to admit. Snape’s face was still bruised but that was fading, and his jaw (among other things) was now in the right place and not broken. Best of all, the matron had washed his hair and cleaned him up before packing him in, so he didn’t stink. Harry kept his excitement to himself on that issue. 

Draco had gone into their bedroom about eleven to get some sleep, leaving Harry to sit at Snape’s bedside and read there until sleep took him. Sals slithered up his leg at midnight, and he smiled, picked her up, and settled her around his neck. He nodded off just after two in the morning. 

It seemed only minutes later (although nearly seven hours had passed) that he was woken by a shout.

Severus didn’t know where he was. He was paralyzed from the neck down, lying on some sort of slab at the center of an ancient stone temple. Everything was freezing; he was nude under the layers of bandages. His arms were crossed over his chest. Someone had wrapped him like a mummy from head to toe, but they had left his face alone for some reason. 

Torches flared. Drums sounded. There were footsteps. Someone was chanting – it sounded evil, with way too many “s” noises, and it was getting closer, closer … and suddenly Lucius Malfoy was over him, his Deatheater hood making him look alarmingly like a Druid. 

Severus panicked. Lucius hissed through a smile and pointed a crooked finger to his left. Horrified, but unable to stop himself, Severus turned his head (the only part of him that worked) and looked. There, on other stone slabs set a few feet away, were two more mummies with bare faces.

His sons. 

Harry spoke. “Dad!” he hollered, as three Druid Deatheaters picked him up and carried him off to parts unknown. “Oh, God, what are you doing to me? DAD! HELP!”

His words echoed off the walls, and Snape could not help him, or even cry out. His mouth wouldn’t work. 

Draco followed, squirming slightly and yelling more, but not faring any better against the followers taking him away. 

“Death for you, my boy,” said Nagini, who appeared out of nowhere and slithered over Lucius’s shoulder. “It’s the box for you.” 

“No,” Snape finally managed. “No.”

He tried to resist, but it was useless. Before he knew it, several cloaked figures had picked him up and settled him in a tight casket. Lucius began to pull the lid over him.

“No!” he cried out. “No, oh God, don’t shut the box, don’t shut the box …”

“Don’t shut the BOX!” he shouted, blowing himself into the waking world. 

There was a sudden commotion to his left. A book went flying and landed on the floor. Someone was scrambling around and yelling something. It barely registered. 

“Don’t shut the box!” he yelled again, through an uncooperative mouth. “Damn you all, I’ll kill you! Where are they?!” he shouted at the ceiling. 

“Dad, calm down! Dad!” 

That pulled Snape up short. His eyes were open now, and he was breathing hard. Somehow, he had left that temple and ended up somewhere familiar. He was flat on his back in his own bed, and someone was climbing up on the mattress beside him, gently holding him still. Harry leaned into view, looking like he hadn’t slept properly in a few days and pulling in air nearly as hard as Snape. 

“Breathe. Come on now, it’s okay, you’re okay. You’re home.” 

A hand was on his forehead, now, not trying to restrain him, just resting, feeling for something. Snape just stared at Harry, still not quite free of the nightmare.

“What?” he asked, and coughed, not clear what he was looking at. 

“I heard a noise! What happened?” Draco yelled, running in. He was only half-dressed and skidded ungracefully to a stop in his socks. Then he saw Snape. 

“Severus, thank Merlin!”

He jumped up on the bed on Snape’s other side. Snape flinched a bit when Harry laid a hand on his chest, but reality was beginning to settle in. He was in his bedroom, and both of his sons were here and looking down at him, their faces worried and drawn. Harry’s clothes looked as though he’d slept in them and he smelled slightly of sweat. Draco looked as though someone had ripped him apart and he was still in the process of putting himself back together. 

Harry took his hands away. “Bad dream?” he asked sympathetically. 

“Mummified,” Snape managed to say. 

“Damn it, I _knew_ she made that blanket too tight!” Draco snapped. “Budge over, Harry. Hang on Severus, we’ll get this thing off you.” After a minute of fiddling with the covers and the blanket, Draco added, blushing a bit, “And erm, we’ll get you some sleep things, too.” 

“His forehead’s warm,” Harry commented, and without further preamble he reached out and took Snape’s left hand. “Tch. _And_ he’s freezing. Great.”

The next several minutes were spent settling Snape more comfortably – getting him into pajamas and socks, removing the diagnostic blanket and bundling him up gently in a different one, pulling up the bedclothes and adding an extra padded quilt, and piling pillows behind him so he could sit up a little. Snape protested this briefly, but he was too tired to really make an effort and he’d squandered most of his voice by shouting anyway. 

While Draco fixed the comforter a little better, Harry picked up an empty glass on the nightstand. He looked at Sals around his neck and hissed a charm that made water shoot out of his fingers and into the glass. Snape watched the cup fill and swallowed almost convulsively. The water looked cool and inviting. 

“Are you thirsty?” 

Snape nodded and reached for the cup, only to find after several attempts that he couldn’t free his hands from the blankets. The boys looked at each other in dismay. In the end, Draco lifted his head a little and Harry put the glass to his lips so he could drink. He gulped madly and finished two-thirds of the glass before Harry tugged it away. 

“Hey, slow down. You’ll make yourself sick. Take a break for a second.”

Harry put the glass down and conjured a damp cloth. He folded it once and laid it on Snape’s forehead. Snape leaned back into his pillows then, and relaxed. The water was deliciously cold, the cloth soothing and cool. The bed was warm and comfortable, especially under his aching body. The boys really looked like they were here. But he’d been through a lot. If he was still dreaming or something … he had to ask. 

“Are you real?”

Harry’s eyes crinkled as he smiled; the expression was exhausted and indulgent. “Of course,” he said softly, and shifted himself on the bed.

“I’m real too,” Draco added inanely, his eyes never leaving Snape’s. 

Harry’s tired smile shifted to take in his brother then went back to Snape, who was regarding them both with slight suspicion. 

“You,” Snape mumbled, looking at Draco. “What does your mother call you?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Sweet Merlin, do we _have_ to do –?” A look from Harry cut him off mid-whine. “Oh, fine. She calls me ‘Dragon my treasure.’ Satisfied?” He colored intensely and looked down at the bed. 

Snape, indeed satisfied with the answer and the accompanying behavior, turned to Harry. “And you,” he said. “When you do what I’ve taught you, what do you see?”

Harry wasn’t smiling anymore. His gaze was sad. “Oh Dad,” he murmured. “Fire.” 

Snape swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded. So this was real. Somehow, someone had gotten him out of that hell, and while he was admittedly curious as to what happened, the details could wait. The most important thing right now was that his sons were alive, and all right, and here. That was when his vision blurred. He wasn’t quite sure why this was happening until he blinked and the drops slid down his face. 

Both boys looked aghast at this. They moved forward together, blown towards him in shared bewilderment, and put their arms around him. The silence was heavy. Harry closed his eyes for a moment, his head knocked gently against Draco’s and his ear against Snape’s chest, finding unbelievable relief in the sound of his father’s heartbeat. And out of the stillness there came a puff of warm breath across the top of his head and a sudden, light crush of lips. 

Madam Pomfrey came by soon after. The infirmary was busy this morning, so she’d only just noticed the little alarm telling her the blanket had been removed. She gave Snape a few more potions to take. One of them was a nasty-smelling green concoction. It seemed to take away most of his aches, but it left him so mixed-up that he forgot where he was for a few minutes (or perhaps _when_ he was) and he asked Harry, in a whisper no less, what Harry had gotten for Question 13. 

Harry didn’t have a clue what Snape was talking about. He looked at Draco in dismay. 

“It’ll wear off very soon, don’t worry,” Madam Pomfrey said. She looked slightly amused. “Initial side-effect. As soon as he’s less confused, try to get something in him.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry mumbled. He shared another look with Draco. Neither of them was looking forward to this; both of them were highly embarrassed (on Snape’s behalf) that his limbs still weren’t cooperating enough for him to even raise his arms, let alone feed himself. 

After Madam Pomfrey left though, Snape seemed to snap out of it and looked around wearily. His stomach made an unpleasant noise, and he blinked at both of them.

They skirted the dignity issue as long as they could. Harry decided to start him on half-cups of anything that could be put to his lips: weak tea and chicken broth, tomato soup, and finally a thin milkshake. Every meal was silent, and he slept a lot in-between, which did nothing for Harry and Draco’s nerves. But when his fourth meal of the day rolled around they were totally out of ideas and it was clearly time for something solid anyway. 

The boys knew it would not be pleasant. Snape had gotten a little more alert in the past three hours, and he was had already expressed his annoyance with having to drink everything. It was clear also that he was very distressed at his inability to move without shaking violently.

So at 6:30, they walked in like they were leading a funeral procession. Draco held a napkin, and Harry carried a small bowl of lime gelatin and a spoon. Snape, propped up by a mountain of pillows, watched them warily. Draco sat down on his right, mirroring his expression. Harry sat down on his left, steeled himself, and very bravely (or very stupidly) gathered up a spoonful of the green stuff and wordlessly offered it up. 

Snape was horrified at first. Then he shot Harry the angriest, ugliest, nastiest glare he could muster. He was very tired so it wasn’t that scary, but he would not, repeat _not_ , be fed like a baby by one of his own sons. Harry actually swallowed at the expression on his father’s face. But he pushed forward, and gamely brought the spoon closer.

“Get. Pomfrey. Now.” Snape growled this clearly, although how he managed it through nearly closed lips, Harry never figured out.

Draco bolted for the Floo. Harry, relieved that the battle was on hold, put the gelatin down and spent an awkward moment in a mutual stare-off with Snape until Madam Pomfrey came bustling in. Draco stood behind her in the doorway. She paused for a second at the stormy look on Snape’s face and the full bowl of gelatin on his nightstand. 

“Boys,” she said, “Would you leave us for a moment?” 

Harry obeyed the order at once, but Draco looked a bit interested to watch his father have it out with the nurse. Harry had to yank him out of the room. Pomfrey closed the door behind them. They immediately put their ears to it, but unfortunately the matron was way ahead of them. She put some kind of scrambling Babel charm on the door, so even though they both listened intently, they only heard what sounded like the climactic scene of a soap opera – in Farsi.

But when she opened the door again a few minutes later, Snape looked triumphant. He was holding the bowl of gelatin in one hand and the spoon in the other. He was eating. And his hands were perfectly steady.

Harry, a bit delirious from being a caregiver for the past 48 hours, grinned like an idiot and elbowed Draco. 

The other two days of bed rest passed quickly. It turned out that Madam Pomfrey had put a Weakening Hex on Snape to keep him in bed that first day, and had lifted it when she realized what Harry and Draco had almost been forced to do. To his credit, Snape mostly behaved himself, although after a few hours of staring at the ceiling he insisted he was dying of boredom and asked for some essays to grade.

Harry was happy to help with that. He curled up on a chair and did his homework while Snape bled rivers of red ink all over students’ ruminations on the 6 distinct uses of Kelpie scales. Draco joined them most of the time. When the boys left the room they were satisfied that their father would stay in bed and rest. He didn’t, of course. He repeatedly got up and prowled the room.

But they only caught him at it once. 

By the end of the fifth day the wards looked bright and stronger than ever, and Snape was back on his feet. It was Sunday, and Pomfrey had pronounced him fit enough to teach tomorrow, but warned him to take it easy. 

He had ignored her, of course, and had passed the day as little more than a blur of black robes, finishing up things that he had been unable to attend to while ill, and getting ready to work the next day. Draco and Harry were sitting at the dining table doing some homework when he came shuffling in. He’d just finished grading a stack of quizzes, which he dumped on the table with a look of disgust, and went to check on a potion that was bubbling in the lab, presumably for a demonstration tomorrow. 

Harry was tired. He and Draco were finishing their homework both out of necessity and for the distraction factor. They had just come back from a hearing by the Board of Governors regarding Lucius Malfoy. Following their testimony, Malfoy had been stripped of his position and barred from Hogwarts, and Dumbledore had further tightened security around the castle. Upon hearing this news, Snape had just nodded solemnly.

Normally something like this would have gotten a smile, and maybe even a slight laugh of victory. But he hadn’t even deigned to lift the corner of his lips, nor did he show nary an incisor, thanks to a bit of overzealousness on Poppy’s part. Harry had discovered it on the third day quite by accident when Snape had flossed after a meal. 

Somehow during her reattachment operation, the nurse had accidentally bleached his teeth, and either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. They were alarmingly white now and Snape, in classic fashion, absolutely refused to show them to anybody if he could help it.

He came back from checking his potion and dropped heavily into a chair at the dining room table. He felt he was strong enough now to get some good answers, so he cleared his throat to attract the attention of the boys. Harry put down his quill and scratched his neck. Draco marked his place in his text. 

“Yes?” Draco asked, closing his book. His lips were tight, like he was expecting to be shouted at. 

This bothered Harry immensely, who turned to look at Snape rather than regard his brother.

“I have to admit,” Snape began, lacing his fingers, “I’m curious as to how I got from Lucius’s dungeon to my bed. And Albus hasn’t told me anything.” 

This wasn’t exactly true. Today after the hearing, Dumbledore had told him a few vague things. But the old man had kept insisting, and very ominously, that Severus ‘talk to the boys about it.’ 

“I do believe that I’m in good enough health to receive some information … if you two have any.”

They looked at him with something like terror. Harry blinked. Draco swallowed. The way their father had said “if you two have any” sounded very suspiciously like he expected a real answer.

“Um, well, it’s like this,” Harry said carefully. “Hearing what happened isn’t so much a question of you being healthy. It’s more a question of, um, us _staying_ that way. Sir.”

Snape huffed. “I’m sorry, you fear impending bodily injury should I be displeased with what you tell me?”

Harry said, “No, it’s not that,” just as Draco said “Yes!” very loudly. They immediately turned their anxiety on each other.

“Shut up!”

“ _You_ shut up! When he finds out you –” 

“Quiet!” Snape barked. 

That sudden explosion of noise did the trick. They stopped fighting immediately and turned to him. 

“Now stop this foolishness and tell me what happened. If you are so worried about my reaction, I promise to reserve judgment until the end of the tale.”

Harry looked very uncomfortable, and Draco little better, but in the end they sucked it up and told him. It was very hard to work their way through the whole painful thing, from the illicit magic on the picture frame and Harry’s crazy camouflage spell to the battle with Lucius and the Deatheaters, to finding him and their mad dash home. In hindsight, every rash decision and every panicked move sounded even more ridiculous than it had at the time.

When they were done with their story, neither boy could look at him. Harry had never felt so stupid in his life. If Snape was displeased about being an invalid for a few days (although he’d handled it reasonably well), he was _sure_ to be displeased about being turned into a rock and riding home in Harry’s pocket. Draco wasn’t feeling so good either, considering his big contribution at the battle had been throwing pebbles and insulting Lucius, mostly because he’d allowed his wand to be taken from him in the first place. Pathetic really, how he’d let himself be played like that.

“I see,” Snape said finally, taking it all in. “Well, obviously, since you arrived back here with me, and considering you’ve spent the better part of this past week helping me, you’ve had a while to think about what you did. What do _you_ think I should do to you?” 

That got their attention.

“Nothing?” Draco asked hopefully.

Harry snorted. “Please, Draco. He has to do _something_ to us.” He sounded very defeated. “It was wrong to mess with the picture frame again, and it was a stupid idea to leave the school. We didn’t even have a real plan … we just made things up as we went along! I mean, when you think about it, we did absolutely nothing right. It’s a bloody miracle we didn’t get killed.”

There was a long pause as Snape considered Harry’s words, a little alarmed that they seemed to have somehow been taken right out of his mouth. Then he regarded Harry for a moment, and realized that the boy had probably already inflicted enough punishment on himself. The guilt was practically painted on him, splattered across the dejected hang of his shoulders and swirling in the ancient look of his green eyes. 

“I disagree,” Snape said finally, “That you did nothing right. You had noble intentions, and I know this will fan the flames of your Gryffindor tendencies, Harry, but I do approve of that. You also got what you came for. I am happy that both of you were fortunate in your endeavor, and I am very grateful for your help afterwards. That said …”

_Uh, oh,_ Harry thought. _Here it comes_.

“We are at war. You two know this very well, but I must remind you that in war, you have to constantly make decisions about what’s important, what’s worth saving, and what will win the fight. And recently, you two had to make a choice – a cruel one – between your personal safety and mine.” Snape sighed. “I must confess, I am worried about both of you. But it is not because you broke the rules, or did experimental magic, or took on Deatheaters.”

“It isn’t?” Draco asked incredulously. “All that rubbish we did … you won’t punish us for it?”

Harry glared at him, and Snape crossed his arms. “You want punishment? No dessert for two weeks. I’ll tell the elves.”

He raised both eyebrows in a challenging manner at Draco, who took that as his cue to stop interrupting. 

“And as for worrying me,” Snape continued, “The fact that you two idiots charged out there with little more than a wand and a prayer merely makes me _angry_. No, what _worries_ me, and terribly so, is that you made the wrong decision.”

Harry stared at him in confused silence. Draco scowled. 

“Lucius is still out there. Both of you must take it for granted that the time will again come when you are asked to choose between yourselves and me, or possibly between _winning_ and me.” He stopped and took a breath. “If you choose _me_ , and if I find _out_ ,” he said, clipping his consonants severely, “The war and all it entails will the least of your problems. Am I clear?”

Neither of them replied. 

Harry was silent, busily rebelling in his head. Snape’s position was totally lame, quite frankly, and he thought fiercely that if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing. Well all right, maybe _some_ things, but not his basic decision. He half prayed that Snape would use a little Legilimency and see that, so he wouldn’t have to say it. The corner of his lips turned up.

Draco was silent too. If it came down to the war or his family, the choice was blindingly obvious, no matter what Severus said. He quirked a little smile at the tabletop. 

And Snape was just grateful that neither of them had yet fired back and called him a hypocrite. He had provided a staggeringly bad example after all, putting his own life on the line by going after his sons in the first place. He tried to tell himself that what he had done was different, because he was their father. He had responsibilities to them.

But it was not different. 

It went both ways. He could see it in their faces. Taking in their vague expressions of amusement, he realized that he hadn’t even convinced himself with his argument, much less his sons. He hadn’t fooled those boys for a second.

All three of them looked around the table at each other, and nobody said a word. The choice was clear. They knew what they would do if they had to decide again. And they would not apologize, and they would not explain. 

THE END


End file.
